What's happening with Amino?

A lot is happening at Amino right now. We’re working on Amino Index, expanding the expert blogs and improving both the business marketplace and the premises marketplace. The shared goal is to help entrepreneurs and the self-employed find knowledge, customers, partners and good opportunities to trade with one another. I tell the story behind my own businesses in Iværksætter til jeg dør.

I’m back from a little Caribbean cruise with the family. Here in August 2010, that sort of thing doesn’t cost the earth when many people can’t afford to travel, and it was great fun. But now I want to tell you what we’re working on at Amino over the coming months.

Expert blogs with tools you can use

What I’ve been working hard on over the past few months is Amino’s expert blogs. We’ve found around 25 brilliant bloggers who should focus above all on practical tools.

Some explain how to optimise your Google AdWords budget. Others help you write good blog posts or explain how to start a blog in the first place.

We also have a nutrition adviser discussing becoming healthier so you have more energy as an entrepreneur. That’s the kind of concrete help I want more of.

Most recently, we’ve gained Mogens Nørgaard, who appears as Denmark’s dictator. It’s quite entertaining, and I think his heart is in the right place. Perhaps with the exception of how public-sector employees see him. The number of public-sector employees certainly seems to be one of his hobbyhorses.

His post already has around 30 comments and a heated debate. I’ve promised to put a link below, so spend five minutes on it.

Amino Index should make trading with other small businesses easier

The next project will be interesting if you sell products or services to entrepreneurs and the self-employed. But remember that entrepreneurs are private individuals in their spare time too. If you sell children’s clothes, are a massage therapist or offer something completely different, it could also be relevant.

Amino exists to help the self-employed and entrepreneurs. I want to give small businesses with fewer than five employees some of the opportunities big businesses have.

Big businesses are swimming in discounts and benefits. But they don’t also need to swim in your money if you can find a good deal with another entrepreneur.

If you need a rake for the garden, for example, why automatically go into a big Silvan and support a corporation? Perhaps an entrepreneur with an online shop can give you a fantastic price.

That’s the idea behind Amino Index, which we’re working on right now. It should be a big directory of small businesses in Denmark, making it quick and easy to find another self-employed person to trade with.

Show your business, products and discounts

If you sell something yourself, you should be able to present your business in the directory. Say when it started, show your logo and describe your product categories.

You should be able to link to your website and the different product categories. You should also be able to say who you are and give other entrepreneurs a reason to shop with you.

Discounts are part of the idea. You can give Amino Plus members a special discount. We’ll encourage that and reward it with more visibility.

You can also offer a general discount to Amino users that people outside Amino and Google can’t see. Then it becomes a benefit of being in the community.

Ideally, that should give you more revenue. At the same time, it should make it easier to find a decent discount at another self-employed person’s business.

Plus members help fund development

We’re also working on extra benefits for Amino Plus members, including more visibility and probably more room in their presentation.

The reason is simple: They support Amino and help pay for us to build services such as Amino Index.

My estimate at this point is that developing the directory will cost somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 kroner. That’s a lot of money, and Plus members are among those making it possible.

So I also want to help those same people get better terms. That’s another reason to become a Plus member: You support development and get something extra in return.

The business marketplace is getting going again

We’ve almost finished the big overhaul of Amino Virksomhedsbørs. If you’ve been following along, you’ve probably seen how much it’s changed over the past six months.

We’ve continually improved the search options and how we index things, and there’s more information than before.

When we changed it, people were a little alarmed. Partly because we also changed the economics of the service. It became much cheaper, but people aren’t always happy with change, even when it includes a benefit.

So it’s taken a little time to get it going again. Now we can see more activity, which is really nice. If you have suggestions for improvements, I’d still like to hear them.

The premises marketplace needs fresh listings and better search

Amino Lokalbørs is getting a major overhaul too. It should make it easier both to find new office space and to get rid of the old space.

One challenge is older listings we haven’t been good enough at removing. We need to do better at keeping the database clean.

We’ve already gone through the business marketplace with a fine-tooth comb and removed old listings. Of course, we’ve been tidying up along the way, but this time we’ve taken a firmer approach: If we were in doubt, we removed the listing.

That’s the same approach we’ll use on the premises marketplace. The goal is for people to encounter fresh listings in our services instead of wasting time on things that are no longer current.

Take a look at Amino Events too

Finally, I want to put in a word for Amino Events. Perhaps you haven’t discovered it at all, but at this point you’ll find it in the top bar.

We have more than 300 events for entrepreneurs. You can look for sales courses, talks and fairs or see what’s happening in a particular part of the country.

If you want to find something in North Jutland, South Jutland or Zealand, you can look for it. It can be a good way to discover a relevant event right in your area.

Those are some of the big things we’re working on. Now I need to get back up to speed after the holiday, and then there’ll be more posts from me.

Well, I’ll tell you 🙂 And as promised, a link to Mogens, Denmark’s new dictator – Click here